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Written Question
Homicide: Reoffenders
Tuesday 12th September 2023

Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people who were convicted of murder were released at the end of their original tariff in each of the last five years; how many people who were convicted of murder were recalled to prison after they were released in each of the past 5 years; and how many people who were convicted of domestic homicide were recalled to prison after they were released in each of the last five years.

Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)

Figures for question 1 are in Table 1. These are the number of first-time releases at the end of the original tariff following a mandatory life sentence.

Table 1. The number of people convicted of murder who were released at the end of their original tariff in each of the last five years:

Release Year

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

Count

264

230

236

193

197

Figures for question 2 are in Table 2. These are the number of recalls in the last five years for offenders who at the time of recall had a conviction for murder. The power to recall is a vital public protection measure and all individuals supervised under licence in the community are liable to recall to prison if they fail to comply with their licence conditions.

Table 2. The number of people convicted of murder who were recalled to prison after they were released in each of the last five years:

Licence Revocation Year

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

Count

168

195

188

196

219

For question three, which relates specifically to those offenders convicted of domestic homicide, the data is not routinely available and the work to identify such cases would exceed the appropriate cost limit under the request for the provision of data.

Notes:

  1. Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that this data has been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by HM Prison & Probation Service. Consequently, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.

2. Lifer Migration; These are prisoners who were sentenced prior to the introduction of the Public Protection Unit Database (PPUD), there records were migrated from paper files when the database was introduced in 2009.


Written Question
Prisons: Repairs and Maintenance
Tuesday 12th September 2023

Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will publish a list of all (a) maintenance contracts, (b) contractors and (c) contract (i) costs and (ii) lengths across the prison estate.

Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)

Maintenance contracts for the prison estate with the details requested are set out in the table below:

Maintenance Contract

Contractor

Current Annual Contract Cost

Contract Length

Prison FM Contract- 1305

Amey Community Ltd

£55.5m

June 2015 to March 26

Prison FM Contract - 1306

Amey Community Ltd

£49.7m

June 2015 to March 26

Prison FM Contract - 12631

Mitie Care & Custody Ltd

£3.5m

February 2012 to March 26

In addition to the contracts shown in the above table, maintenance activities are also undertaken by the Ministry of Justice’s wholly owned company, GFSL, who operate under a Memorandum of Understanding. GFSL provide maintenance for around 50 prison establishments across the South of England with an annual value of £88.3m.

All suppliers play a critical role in maintaining capacity and ensuring our prisons are safe and decent.

We ensure value of money by regularly benchmarking different elements of the service.


Written Question
Prisons: Buildings
Tuesday 12th September 2023

Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when he expects to hear the results of his Department's survey on the number of buildings in the prison estate that include reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).

Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)

Departments have been asked to report on the current picture of suspected and confirmed RAAC in their estates as soon as possible. This will be updated on a regular basis as new buildings are identified and surveying and remediation are carried out.


Written Question
Prisoners' Release
Monday 4th September 2023

Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners have been released at their Sentence End Date in each of the last 10 years for which data is available.

Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)

Prisoners(1) released on their Sentence End Date (SED) each year, 2013 to 2022, in England and Wales

Year Releases

2013 1,854

2014 1,179

2015 680

2016 1,849

2017 2,068

2018 2,228

2019 1,871

2020 1,346

2021 1,219

2022 1,427

1. Prisoners released from determinate sentences only.

Note: In 2015 we made large-scale improvements to our data processes, therefore data for pre-2015 is not directly comparable.

Data sources and quality

The figures in this table have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Source: Prison NOMIS

PQ 195128 (Ministry of Justice; Data and Analysis (Directorate))

For majority of sentences, a prisoner is required to serve part of the sentence in custody, with a period served in the community subject to licence. A prisoner may, however, be released at the expiry of their sentence as a result being recalled to custody from licence following initial release, or if enough additional days at adjudication have been awarded to defer release until the end of the sentence. Also, standard determinate sentences imposed for certain terrorist/terrorist connected offences, require the offender to serve the sentence in full (where parole is not granted earlier).


Written Question
Prisoners: Training
Tuesday 25th July 2023

Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what commercial companies were involved in working with HM Prison Service to train prisoners for employment as of 18 July 2023.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

As of 18 July, 87 organisations were actively involved in working with HM Prison & Probation Service in training prisoners.

The New Futures Network is the team in HM Prison & Probation Service responsible for working with businesses to secure jobs for prison leavers. Information about the commercial relationships it has developed is available at this link: New-End-of-year-sales-21-22.pdf (newfuturesnetwork.gov.uk).


Written Question
Prisoners: Vocational Education
Tuesday 25th July 2023

Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners gained vocational qualifications in each of the last 12 years.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

This information could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

Since 2019, the Ministry of Justice has centrally recorded the number of educational courses completed by prisoners, however the information collected does not differentiate between vocational qualifications and other types.

Statistics on the number of course completions are published on gov.uk, in table 2.3 here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-education-and-accredited-programme-statistics-2021-2022.


Written Question
Prisoners: Vocational Education
Tuesday 25th July 2023

Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what funding his Department has allocated for vocational education in prisons in financial year 2023-24.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

Funding is not allocated specifically to vocational education. Prison governors will spend their allocated education budget flexibly during the year to fund provision to meet particular local needs (including vocational education) via the Dynamic Purchasing System and Prison Education Framework.

HMPPS continues to ensure prisoners improve skills such as literacy and numeracy, acquire relevant vocational qualifications, and access employment and training opportunities on release.


Written Question
Family Proceedings: Safety
Tuesday 25th July 2023

Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when he expects the recommendations of Assessing risk of harm to children and parents in private law children cases report, published in June 2020, to be implemented.

Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

We have made good progress on many of the measures that the Government committed to taking forward following the publication of the Harm Panel report.

In June 2023, my department published a delivery update that set out the action we have taken so far, as well as the action we intend to take.

Work on important measures, such as the Integrated Domestic Abuse Court pilots and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s new monitoring mechanism, is ongoing. We will provide further updates on this work as appropriate.


Written Question
Family Proceedings: Safety
Tuesday 25th July 2023

Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 20 December 2022 to Question 109769 on Family Proceedings: Safety, what recent estimate he has made of when the final review into the presumption of parental involvement and its risk of harm exception will be published.

Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

This is an important and complex issue, and we want to ensure that any recommendations resulting from the review of the presumption of parental responsibility are based on a solid understanding of the ways this presumption is applied, and how this affects children.

The evidence gathering stage of the review has been completed. The review, including all research reports, will be published later this year.


Written Question
Prison Officers: Recruitment
Wednesday 14th June 2023

Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what was the cost to the public purse of recruitment processes for Prison Officers in each of the last 10 years.

Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)

The delivery model for prison officer recruitment in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) and formerly, the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), has changed several times since 2013 to align with business need. This has spanned local, regional, and centralised management of campaigns, as well as the current blended approach of central and local management, with recruitment costs delegated across roles in individual prisons, regional delivery areas, centralised teams, and contracted suppliers.

Therefore, we do not hold complete figures in each year since 2013 as this information is held in a number of different areas and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

The estimated cost to recruit and train a new Band 3 Prison Officer is around £13,000 as published in the Prison Service Pay Review Body 2021 report. Further information can be found on page 55 at: Prison Service Pay Review Body - Twentieth Report on England and Wales 2021 (publishing.service.gov.uk)(opens in a new tab).

Please be aware that the figures contained in the document are subject to regular change due to a number of variables and assumptions used to calculate the figures.